A couple months ago, Shoemoney posted up an E-Mail he received from an anonymous source. Apparently, ValueClick Media is running “free” incentivized offers and have a small disclaimer at the bottom:

To receive the incentive gift you must: 1) register with valid information; 2) complete the user survey; 3) complete at least 2 Silver, 2 Gold and 6 Platinum offers. Purchase may be required.

I, personally, don’t find this to be a big deal. Even though they decided to change the WHOIS information so you don’t immediately know it’s their website, I don’t think that they’re doing anything that’s very different from the tons of other “free” gift websites out there.

However, I do believe that if they decided to hide their original contact information in the WHOIS, they probably have something to hide. Apparently the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does have strict rules on how these websites bring in their traffic and such. Probably why they started an investigation on them.

Now this is the part that gets interesting, is that I remember reading a thread on WickedFire started by Jon, claiming that cops were at his door asking about how a specific offer was promoted (my memory is vague on this topic and I can’t find the thread). Does this mean that laws will start preventing incentive-based offers to stop promoting their website using “free” as a keyword on links or in their banners?

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